New Delhi, Feb 10: As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to transform industries across the world, OpenAI Co-founder and CEO Sam Altman has stressed the importance of ensuring that the benefits of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) are shared broadly and equitably.
In a recent blog post, Altman highlighted that while technological progress historically improves key metrics like health and economic prosperity, achieving equality requires more than technology—it demands innovative solutions.
“Our mission is to ensure AGI benefits all of humanity,” Altman said. While AGI remains a loosely defined term, he explained that it generally refers to AI systems capable of solving increasingly complex problems at a human level across various fields.
With rapid advancements in AI development globally, Altman shared three key insights into the economic aspects of AI:
Intelligence and Resource Scaling:
Altman explained that the intelligence of an AI system is closely linked to the resources used to train and operate it—primarily compute power and data. “It appears that you can invest large sums of money and see continuous, predictable improvements. Scaling laws have proven to be accurate across many levels of magnitude,” he said.
Rapid Decline in AI Costs:
The cost of using a specific level of AI is dropping at an exceptional rate, approximately 10 times every 12 months. Altman noted the drastic reduction in token costs from GPT-4 in early 2023 to GPT-4o in mid-2024, which saw a 150x price decrease. “Moore’s law revolutionized the world with its 2x improvement every 18 months. This decline in AI costs is much stronger,” he added.
Exponential Value of AI:
According to Altman, the socio-economic value created by incremental improvements in AI is growing at a super-exponential rate. As AI intelligence scales, its impact on various sectors becomes disproportionately larger. He believes there is no indication that the current trend of increasing investment will slow down in the near future.
Altman emphasized that if these trends persist, the societal impact of AI could be transformative. OpenAI is now rolling out AI agents that are designed to function as virtual co-workers, which he believes will reshape how industries operate.
However, Altman acknowledged that the effects of AGI will be uneven across different sectors. “While some industries may see minimal changes, others—particularly in science and research—could experience unprecedented acceleration in progress,” he noted. According to him, this scientific advancement may ultimately have a larger impact than any other application of AGI.( With inputs from IANS)